Instructions

ZOOM IN by clicking on the page. A slider will appear, allowing you to adjust your zoom level. Return to the original size by clicking on the page again.

MOVE the page around when zoomed in by dragging it.

ADJUST the zoom using the slider on the top right.

ZOOM OUT by clicking on the zoomed-in page.

SEARCH by entering text in the search field and click on "In This Issue" or "All Issues" to search the current issue or the archive of back issues respectively. If you would like to clear the your search, click on your browser refresh button.

PRINT by clicking on thumbnails to select pages, and then press the
print button.

SHARE this publication and page.

ROTATE PAGE allows you to turn pages 90 degrees clockwise or counterclockwise.Click on the page to return to the original orientation. To zoom in on a rotated page, return the page to its original orientation, zoom in, and
then rotate it again.

CONTENTS displays a table of sections with thumbnails and descriptions.

ALL PAGES displays thumbnails of every page in the issue. Click on
a page to jump.

19
Policy • Vol. 31 No. 1 • Autumn 2015
Free Speech SympoSium
We should walk the Section 18C amendments
back from “the right to be bigots.”
AS AuSTrALiAN
AS The FAir Go
have left the parliamentary champion of amending
the RDA seemingly ill-equipped to deal with
the basic political and social implications of the
proposed changes.
The association that has now been created in
the public mind between changes to the RDA and
the right to say bigoted things means those who
still want to proceed in this direction will need
to walk the case for change back through some
pretty treacherous cultural terrain. The first step in
this journey is to recognise why Senator Brandis’s
statement was such a disaster, not only in PR terms
(including the reinforcing of center-right “redneck”
and “dog-whistle” stereotypes), but also in terms
of understanding and cultivating the kind of social
values and behavioral norms that make a multi-
racial society like modern Australia a success.
I strongly support amending the RDA because
Section 18C undermines the democratic rights of
all Australians. In the wake of the Andrew Bolt
case, I fear that the RDA, as a means of allowing
identity politics to be played out through politically
motivated “lawfare,” will have a chilling effect on
important national debates, including discussion
of contentious issues concerning
Indigenous identity and the
integration of Muslims into
Australian society in the age of
global Islamist terrorism.
2
But if I believed that amending
the RDA did truly mean giving
people the right to be bigots—that
The consensus is that the Abbott
government’s attempt to remove Section
18C from the Racial Discrimination Act
was politically doomed the moment the
attorney general, Senator George Brandis, uttered
his now infamous statement in the Senate about
people having “the right to be bigots.” Whatever
might be said by way of explanation and
contextualization—and I am sure that Senator
Brandis wasn’t actively seeking the support of
bigots for the government’s amendments—this
was more than just a tactical error by the minister
responsible for prosecuting the case for the
abolition of Section 18C. It was also a strategic
disaster for the campaign for amending the RDA.
Senator Brandis’s statement was made in reply
to a reasonable question: if the legal prohibitions
contained in the RDA against speech that insults,
humiliates, offends, or intimidates on the basis of
race were removed, wouldn’t this by proxy create
an official warrant for those inclined to unleash
racial prejudice against ethnic minorities? The
attorney general, unintentionally but nevertheless
decisively, could not have done a better job of
confirming the worst fears that had been publicised
by opponents of amending the RDA, nor a
better job of reinforcing legitimate (if overstated)
concerns about the potentially divisive impact on
community harmony.
I wonder whether Senator Brandis’s statement
was perhaps a product of having the question of
rights “on the brain,” as it were, since so much of
the advocacy concerning Section 18C has been
focused on restoring the individual right to free
expression.
1
To focus on the right to free speech is
obviously correct, as far as it goes, but the impact,
if measured by Brandis’s statement, appears to
Jeremy Sammut is a research fellow at the Centre for
Independent Studies.